3AM
by storytellingphan
Summary: " He checked the time, it was three thirty in the morning, and Dan could not sleep. Not that it came as a terrible shock to him. It felt like he never actually slept nowadays, that he just lay there in the hours between each day. Like any normal person who cant sleep at night. This was the time that Dan's imagination would run wild. Most nights he would just lay there, thinking."


The glare from his phone had almost blinded him, but Dan was never one to leave a notification unanswered if he could help it. After a much longer than necessary scroll through Facebook, Dan clicked his lock button and the screen went black. However before he could place the phone back down on the bed side desk he unlocked the phone just as fast as he had locked it moments ago.

He checked the time, it was three thirty in the morning, and Dan could not sleep. Not that it came as a terrible shock to him. It felt like he never actually slept nowadays, that he just lay there in the hours between each day. Like any normal person who cant sleep at night. This was the time that Dan's imagination would run wild. Most nights he would just lay there, thinking. Nothing in particular, just whatever would come into his thoughts.

He did tend to think about his life a lot, that was one consistent thing. Dan would imagine what his life would be like in the following years. How many years would he keep doing YouTube? How many years would he keep living with Phil? Would he ever move out? Live on his own? Would he do something so socially awkward and embarrassing in front of thousands of people that his reputation and career would plummet because of it? These were the real questions. Dan often thought about his life, and how he would want it to turn out.

In terms of his career, Dan would keep on posting videos, for as long as YouTube was still up and running, he'd be there. A routine uploading schedule would be a nice added bonus, but that would be the real sign that he had become a fully fledged adult. As for his home, London is the more probable and most likely situation, even when imagining with perfect life Dan still had to add a base of logic to his thinking. The ultimate dream would be to migrate to Japan, or at least have a holiday apartment there for whenever he felt like getting away from it all for a while.

As he lay in the dark, with his foot hanging slightly out of the bed in order to catch that perfect temperature at night. He began to reflect on how far his life had come already at only 24. He was living in London with his best friend. He had won awards, had a radio show, a bestselling book and been around the world on a sell out tour. If only 15 year old Dan knew what was coming for him. It was funny to think how his life could have been vastly different if he hadn't gone to Manchester university, or even started YouTube in general. His whole life as he currently knew it all seemed to fix on one decision he made, in theory there were multiple choices that led him to where he was today, but in a general sense it was all because of YouTube.

It did genuinely interest Dan to wonder about life and why it had turned out the way it had. Not in a morbid kind of way. He just liked thinking up all these possible scenarios and parallel lives that he could have had. Maybe in one universe he was having them. Perhaps me had made it as a hot shot lawyer and was living the high life, or maybe he had a simple life with everything he needed. He worked the 9 to 5 and then would go to his parents house on Sunday afternoons for tea and to catch up with all his family. Family was important to Dan, it meant that it didn't matter were in the world you ended up or how bad things seemed to you, you had a place to go to feel safe and loved. He wasn't sure if he wanted to have a family of his own. The responsibility of having to care for and help grow and shape a person was a mammoth task in thought alone. Yet on one hand Dan felt like he would forever feel a twinge of small regret if he never did have his own family.

He did wonder if he would ever get married and finally settle down with someone. Of course he had had previous relationships, but none of them ever stood the test and looking back Dan was grateful for that. Relationships were always funny to Dan. After spending nearly all of his teenage years alone with only a few acquaintances he found it hard to let someone fully in and know everything there was to know about him. As a person Dan had never placed that much importance on relationships, of course they were a wonderful thing to have if you found the right person but in general Dan could take or leave them. He wasn't the type of person to go out and actively want or need a relationship to survive in life. He found happiness and fulfillment in other areas of his life. But he often did imagine what his wedding and married life would be like. The ceremony would have to be traditional in a sense but still feel new and fresh, as well as individual. Above all else he had to sure that when he said those vows that he was saying them to the one. The one person that he would spend the rest of his life with. That would see him at his best and worse and still want to wake up each morning to his face laying on the pillow next to theirs. Ideally his best friend, the one person who could finally know everything there was to know about Daniel James Howell and all this dreams for life. The person that he would marry would be his opposite yet his missing piece. Someone who would fit in at home with his family, yet be completely different from anyone he had ever met. Dan was an old romantic at heart and he wanted to have the fairy tale in that sense. In a way all Dan really wanted in life was simple, to fall in love and live happily ever after.

Out of no where Dan's thoughts were interrupted by an elbow to his side. He jolted in reaction to the nudge and turned to see a sleeping Phil, half smiling and blissfully unaware of what had just happened. Phil was turned facing Dan, his head seemed to drop little off the edge if his pillow. Dan smiled as he watched the boy sleep. He felt a sense of calm and content as he gazed, he didn't even mind that unconsciously knocking or hitting in some ways was a usual occurrence for Phil at night. Dan slowly ran his fingers through the boy's hair. As he pushed a small section back he bowed his head and gave him a small kiss on the forehead.

"Idiot" he whispered to himself.

In a way all he wanted to fall in love and live happily ever after, have the lifelong marriage, the house and the kids, with a couple of dogs thrown in, the perfect life. and he wanted that with Phil.


End file.
